Club O’Zone is closing, taking its 15-year history as a nightclub of various persuasions with it.

No More Bitching

The Bitch. It is a catchy name for a column, especially considering it was directed and more-or-less written by the managing editor of a corporate-run publication. But now the end has come for the murmuring column in Miami New Times that waxed poetic about EU passports, trendy types, animal abuse, make-up artists, politics and whatever else Jean Carey decided to, well, bitch or sometimes even crow about while in her dog persona. Jean Carey is no longer employed by the New Times. The reasons for the divorce between New Times and Carey are sketchy, as both parties are zip-lipped. Carey did not respond to e-mails requesting comment, and Chuck Strouse, editor of Miami New Times, was not too chatty when asked questions about Carey.

“Indeed that’s true. We are advertising for a music editor,” Strouse told Murmurs, referring to the last title Carey held with that paper. “I’m not sure exactly when her last day is [supposed to be.]” (Strouse told Broward-Palm Beach New Times columnist and Daily Pulp blogger Bob Norman that Carey’s last day was Tuesday.)

So is that it? The Bitch column is not only dead, but most sincerely dead? “Things have changed rapidly and it’s unclear what’s next,” Strouse answered. When Murmurs pressed for more details, he said, “I don’t really have much to say about it.”

For years, Carey has had her resume displayed for anyone on the planet to see on her Web site, www.italiangreyhounds.org.  According to this resume, Carey is fluent in Dutch and French and “has some reading and speaking ability in Spanish.” She worked as a staff writer for The St. Petersburg Times and as a researcher for The Tampa Tribune. Then off she went to The Macon Telegraph in Georgia, and to Provo, Utah for The Daily Herald, where she created a trivia game named after one of her pet greyhounds, “Queequeg’s Question,” that “continues as one of Utah’s most popular destination features.”

Finally Carey made her way to the Miami New Times as managing editor in November 2003. Until recent months The Bitch column had no byline and included reports sent to Carey by New Times staffers — reports that were told from the perspective of a shy but culturally savvy female dog. Within a year of Carey’s hiring, there were staff shakeups and apparently some blogging. Once upon a time www.italiangreyhounds.org not only contained pictures of Carey’s pet dogs but also blog posts about people she wasn’t too fond of, according to a July 22, 2005 Daily Business Review article. Carey “posted a series of derogatory remarks about [a] former reporter, whom she supervised. Carey expressed jealousy over the former reporter’s possible romantic relationship with a former New Times staffer with whom she also had a relationship. Carey’s most strident post about the woman was written during regular working hours on a weekday, which suggests that it was done on a company computer.” Carey also slammed other current and former employees, according to the article. When news broke of the blogging, Carey received a weeklong unpaid suspension. (Carey wasn’t alone. The same article reported that New Times calendar editor Lyssa Oberkreser wrote “harsh” comments about another former staffer in her blog, http://librarianlyssa.blogspot.com.  The site has since come down, and Oberkreser is also leaving New Times to move to Tallahassee.)

Few current New Times staffers expressed any sentiments to Murmurs about Carey’s departure. However, one comment was obtained from former New Times writer Victor Cruz: “Jean Carey’s column, The Bitch, was one of the most brilliant column ideas that I have had the pleasure to enjoy in my eight years in Miami. I’m sure wherever she goes, that place will benefit from her creativity.”

The Lozman Saga Continues

If you missed that haircut so sharp you could set your watch by it at the Good & Welfare portion of most North Bay Village commission meetings — fear not. NBV expatriate Fane Lozman is grabbing headlines up in Riviera Beach now.

He was just arraigned last week for his Nov 15. arrest during a City Council meeting. That charge ended up as a mark for trespassing and disorderly conduct.

Also, “they’re still going forward with the eviction,” he said. By “they” Lozman means the city of Rivera Beach, and by “eviction” he means the notice he received on Aug. 9 (which was subsequently challenged) giving him until the end of the month to sail his pirate house-ship elsewhere.

And just last week, on Dec. 20, Lozman, a computer software entrepreneur, was led out of City Council chambers again – this time detained by two police officers. Five more police officers soon showed up, and according to Lozman, “They huddled for about five minutes and then decided not to arrest me.

“The big battle is [now] and the reason I got thrown out of the last meeting is the city wants to build a 300-foot condo/hotel on the public beach,” Lozman added. “[Citizens] launched a petition drive, and the [city] clerk said they were only going to accept 400 of 10,000 signatures collected, saying that only five of the 114 volunteers were allowed to collect signatures.”

Apparently on the night of Dec. 20 Lozman was pontificating about the city clerk’s fitness to, well, clerk. Although Riviera Beach City Clerk Carrie Ward’s online resume lists a slew of qualifications and courses, “The clerk is supposed to have a college degree, and [she] doesn’t have one,” he said. And so, angered commissioners punted him again. Spearheading the swift kick in the rabble-rousing ass? According to Lozman – Commission Chairman Ann Iles.

Leaves you wondering what the future holds for the famed Lozman. “So many people come up to me and hug me for saving their homes.” Lozman refers to saving homes from a recent Riviera Beach City Commission’s move to take many a plot of land from homeowners via eminent domain – a measure Lozman is widely credited with stopping through a sudden change of heart on the part of the dais. “At the meeting the city decided to give up their right of eminent domain. They threw in the towel.”

Lozman is now even considering a bid for mayor of Rivera Beach. “That’s where the real corruption is,” he said. Lozman says he is still handing over much info about the alleged misconduct of Mayor Michael D. Brown to the State Attorney’s Office, and says he is often reminded of the ramifications of “stepping up and taking shots at the mayor.” He has since set his sights on getting the current mayor arrested for misconduct, as he puts it. Besides the usual buttonholing and beleaguering he gets from the cops while walking his dachshund, he says, someone decided to see his raise.

“Both the power steering hoses in my truck were cut, and the air-conditioning hose,” he said.

Club O’Zone is Dead. Dead. Dead.

Once upon a time there was a pretty decent goth club a hellish flight down South Dixie Highway in South Miami in a shadowy, residential mixed-use development specifically known as 6600 SW 57^th Ave. And many a vinyl-clad schoolgirl (exactly which Catholic school issued thigh-highs as a part of its uniform, Murmurs was unsure of as of press time) and goth-bois named Maharaja Von Ghastly spent Wednesday nights wading through fog machine fluid, only to wake up in the back seat of their Hondas. The club even hosted a short-lived burlesque cabaret-type thing on those Wednesday Morgue nights. Lucky for them, the funeral parlor next door parked its hearse right in front of the club.

But as the relatively apathetic goth scene goes, the ratio of goth old-schoolers to frat boys waned (no pun intended), and the goth scene in general started to die (pun intended).

And now, as if the creatures of the night don’t already have too few haunts, Murmurs has secured the very depressing information that Club O’Zone is closing, taking its 15-year history as a nightclub of various persuasions with it.

Gone too will be O’Zone’s better half as one of Miami’s self-proclaimed “longest-running gay bars.” Friday’s Cherry Pie lesbian event was always a night that even the least experimental sorority girl could write home about. The final curiosities will have to be satisfied soon – the nightclub’s farewell party will be Friday, Dec. 29. Eddie O’Reilly, Club O’Zone’s owner, told Murmurs the current property owner, Anthony R. Abraham, will close on his contract to sell his property to the University of Miami in January. Abraham bought the property in 1981 for just under $2 million; the 2006 assessment puts the market value at just under $5 million, county records show.

O’Reilly says the University of Miami doesn’t “know what they’re doing with it yet but are tearing down the [building].”

Sources say UM is building student housing there. The property, which is walking distance to UM, would be a prime chunk of raw meat for the insatiable development appetite of any vampiric college campus.

UM’s media relations department declined to comment on the sale, citing the inability to secure the information from its real estate department, which, for the holidays, “is operating on a skeleton crew.” Heh. You said skeleton. 

O’Reilly, who has owned gay clubs since the 1970s, says his stake in the club’s survival isn’t over yet.

“I’ll start a new place or retire. Probably not retire,” he said. “I feel like I have a few years left,” he laughed.

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